Duplicate content is the topic of many SEO conversations. The search engines penalize duplicate content to an extent but a recent Google blog post has indicated that perhaps the penalty is less damaging than many assumed. The duplicate content penalty is primarily designed to ensure that search engine results are not simply page after page displaying the exact same page content. As such, it may still prove detrimental to the performance of some of your pages. This article is a summary and explanation of Google's blog post, Deftly Dealing with Duplicate Content.